Cons:

I've always believed that the gap between the great and truly spectacular is much wider than that between the good and the great. Relic's previous RTS, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, was by any measure a great game, so it stands to reason that a new RTS based on the gameplay of Dawn of War would probably be every bit as, well, great. Fortunately for strategy gamers who have been eagerly awaiting Relic's latest, Company of Heroes is beyond a souped-up version of Dawn of War. It's a brilliant combination of incredibly deep real-time strategy, beautiful presentation and innovative features that make it one of the best gaming experiences of 2006 to date.

Company of Heroes is based in World War II. Specifically, it follows the travels of Able Company as they go from the horrific landing at Normandy Beach through the push through the French countryside, culminating with the collapse of the German 7th Army. The single-player campaign consists of 15 long and enjoyable missions ranging from capturing the town of Cherbourg to a covert operation to take out a V2 launch site to a truly horrific battle through the hedgerows to capture Hill 192. Each mission is preceded by a well done in-engine cutscene and briefing.

In fact, the cutscenes are just one element of just how impressive Company of Heroes' graphics are. In general terms, of course, they look amazing. Soldier animations as they run, duck and dive on the battlefield are fluid, and a real physics engine creates some amazing scenes as bodies are thrown through the air by artillery fire. Everything on the battlefield is also destroyable and is animated in extraordinary detail. Buildings realistically crumble in pieces and get holes blown in them as they're hit by shells. Telephone wires snap and spark as they're cut. Fire teams that garrison a house actually take up positions within the building and brace their weapons on windowsills to cover the street. Destroyable maps also enhance the gameplay by finally removing the dreaded "puzzle map" once and for all. (All this technical wizardry comes at a price, though. The game requires a pretty robust system, and even the beefy rig I played on had some slowdown during some of the cutscenes and when there were a lot of explosions onscreen at once.)

Despite the technical brilliance, Company of Heroes' real achievement is the art direction. The developers were obviously influenced by Saving Private Ryan, as were many other World War II titles. The difference here is in how well they achieve the almost impossible, conveying the horror of World War II using an RTS engine. Take the first mission in the game, the Normandy landing. The scene starts out with a traditionally animated scene showing boats approaching the beach. After a bit the scene shifts to the game engine, and as men leap from the boat (and in some cases to their deaths), the camera pulls back to a traditional RTS overhead perspective, with bodies floating in the red-stained seawater and a whole troop of soldiers waiting for your orders. It's an extraordinary moment, briefly connecting the player with the truth of the hideous carnage of D-Day -- the awful knowledge that despite the dead, there's still a job to be done and a beach to be stormed. Company of Heroes is the first RTS I've ever played where I actually cared about individual non-hero units and felt bad when they died.